


No Regrets - Just Love

by fabfemmeboy



Series: Sincere Baked Goods [8]
Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 06:43:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13071294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabfemmeboy/pseuds/fabfemmeboy
Summary: Trying to pick up the pieces of Kurt's transfer.





	1. Chapter 1

He didn't care.  
  
Not just didn't care - he didn't give a fuck. The guy made his choice. He wasn't going to sit around crying like some stupid little punk-ass bitch about it.   
  
It wasn't like this was the first time, anyway.  
  
"Is Kurt coming over?" Sarah asked as she settled in at the kitchen table with her math homework.  
  
"No," Puck replied shortly as he started frying the sausage. His mom bought it so it was turkey sausage which wasn't as good, but he felt like toaster waffles for dinner probably wasn't enough 'real' food for her. She was still growing or whatever.  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"'Cause he's not."  
  
"He said he'd help me with-"  
  
"He said a lot of things," Puck stated sharply. "He's not coming over. Get over it."  
  
What? She wasn't a toddler anymore, she was nine - more than old enough to understand. People promised shit and went back on it. People left. People punked out when things got rough instead of doing what they should've been doing with the people they should've been doing it with. They went out and got new lives and didn't look back.  
  
Not like he gave a fuck.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Kurt supposed he shouldn't have been  _entirely_  surprised that his friends were angry with him for his abrupt departure before sectionals, but it still stung that Quinn and Sam were the only ones returning his calls or texts.  
  
"Still icy?" Quinn asked as they walked through the mall on Wednesday afternoon.  
  
"Extremely," he replied. "What's everyoen saying?" he added, making very clear that it wasn't like he cared, except the part where he totally did.  
  
"OH, I don't know. That you're a traitor, that you're doing it to get back at Mr. Schue for giving some solo to Rachel, that you never cared about any of us, that you're having a sex change-"  
  
Kurt nearly choked. "At an all-boys academy?"  
  
"How else would you stand out?"  
  
"I don't even want to know who came up with that one."  
  
"Brittany. Kind of. Let's see. You secretly got expelled for the fight with Azimio, you're transferring to be closer to big hospitals because your dad's worse than anyone knew. Oh - and you're cheating on Puck with some guy named Blaine."  
  
Kurt's eyes narrowed - exactly two people knew about Blaine: Puck and Finn. Three guesses which one was enough of an ass to start saying that. "I'm not. And while it may be beside the point, you can't cheat on someone who broke up with you."  
  
"I noticed Santana was a little too smug," Quinn replied. "I'm sorry. What happened?"  
  
"I don't know. Doesn't matter." Kurt shook his head and considered a jacket. It was cut like a cross between an Edwardian dandy and a circus ringleader in black wool with grey trim and almost military-inspired buttons down both sides of the front, and it would have looked fantastic with two dozen outfits - none of which could he wear to school. "I don't know why I'm even looking - I don't have anywhere to wear anything anymore," he said with a sigh, as though all the stuff with puck didn't matter - it was the lack of clothes that was getting him down.  
  
"I totally understand," Quinn replied sincerely. "This?" She indicated the demure but relatively fitted shirt she was wearing. "It's the first thing I bought after I lost the baby weight. Today's the first I've gotten to wear it."  
  
"You do know you're not actually required to wear your Cheerios uniform every day," Kurt pointed out. "The threshold, it turns out, is game day plus at least one other day per week. Two is safer, but I have my limits on polyester."  
  
"I know you do," she laughed softly. "But to be honest...as frustrating as it can make trips to the mall..."  
  
"There's something powerful about the sense of belonging the uniform brings," Kurt acknowledged.  
  
"Exactly."  
  
"So is anyone  _not_  pissed at me?" Kurt asked, changing the subject as he moved to a rack of bowties. On Fridays Dalton students were not required to wear the uniform ties - but, as the written policy showed, they were not prohibited from wearing a different tie. He just didn't have very many that would go with the navy-red-grey combination. Clearly that needed remedied.  
  
"Well me, obviously. And Sam."  
  
"I saw a text from him about a movie night?"  
  
"Yes. He wanted me to make it very clear to you that he doesn't do the mall, but he would still like to hang out."  
  
It was kind of sweet, Kurt had to admit. "Tell him thank you."  
  
"I will. I can't imagine what movies the two of you would have in common."  
  
"I can't imagine what movies the two of  _you_  would have in common," Kurt replied.  
  
"Yes, and if he makes me watch the directors cut of Lord of the Rings one more time, I'll throw  _him_  off the top of a mountain into the giant pit of fire. The difference is, he and I rarely actually  _watch_  most of the movie."  
  
"Are his lips as kissable as they look?" he asked, knowing Quinn was the one person who wouldn't get all defensive and think he was trying to muscle in on another straight guy. For that matter, Sam was the only guy who wouldn't completely freak out if the question ever got back to him.  
  
She blushed just a little and busied herself looking at a display of hats. "He's very sweet."  
  
"Good - you need sweet after-"  
  
Her eyes widened. "Puck didn't-"  
  
"No. Oh no. Definitely not," Kurt replied quickly. "Believe me, it was all very...mutual."  
  
To be honest, the idea of saying no to sex with a guy he liked sounded kind of foreign now. He could understand Quinn's paranoia and not wanting ot jump back into the emotional turmoil of the previous year, and he got wanting the first time to be special - though his best laid plans there had clearly gone astray - but beyond that...  
  
Oddly enough, it was the first time he'd really felt like a part of Team Boy. Maybe Puck was the one who had converted him, and not vice versa.  
  
"And he can be sweet when he wants to," Kurt added, though he did wonder why the hell he was defending the guy who kicked him out and started sleeping with Santana in front of him because he had gotten into Dalton. "Not that he'd ever admit it, and he's still an ass, but-"  
  
"I know," Quinn replied. She of all people did. "He's an idiot, he's entirely self-absorbed, and his pride in being a slut still confuses me. But then he does things like sing you a song about how much he wants to be there even if he doesn't know how, and..."  
  
"Yes," Kurt agreed softly. He could picture Puck's charming grin that seemed to be triggered by just the act of picking up a guitar, and it made his heart race just a little. He tried to shove the feeling down - Puck was a jerk. He had broken up with him, sort of, because Kurt found a place he could be  _happy_. He was spite-fucking Santana. Kurt kicked himself for missing Puck; he should have been better than that. But the way Puck touched him, said his name, kissed him... "Does it ever get easier to stop missing him?" he asked in a mournful voice.  
  
"I'm the wrong person to ask," Quinn replied with a rueful smile. "I didn't even like him, then we had a child together, then he pursued me and I needed space, and then we just...drifted." She paused, then added, "Anyway. I'm sorry." Kurt gave her a small grateful look and she changed the subject. "How's the new school?"  
  
In truth, it was overwhelming but seemed amazing, like some dream he was terrified he'd wake up from...but it was marred by the fact that he couldn't really share it with anyone without feeling guilty. He wanted to be able to guystalk with Mercedes and talk about songs with Rachel since she was the only one whose knowledge of Broadway and technical singing could rival his own. He wanted to tell Puck about everything, then go make out with him.  
  
He wanted everything to be exactly like it had been, only with him at another school. It hadn't occurred to him before that that wasn't possible. Now he wondered - genuinely wondered - if even the most wonderful fantasy school could be worth what it was costing him. The feeling was eating away at him, but at least it distracted him from missing the smell of Puck's aftershave.  
  
* * * * *  
  
He remembered the first kid he ever swirlied. He was six and the dweeb tried to take his dessert -  _his_  fucking fruit rollup! He grabbed the kid by the front of his shirt, dragged him across the hall to the bathroom, kicked out his legs, shoved his head down, and flushed for all he was worth.  
  
His mom wanted to kill him. His dad gave him a high-five, then his mom bitched at his dad until he stormed out and didn't come home for three days.  
  
So the next day, bolstered by the fact that the swirlied loser brought him his cookies  _and_  lunch money, Puck swirlied two kids. He loved the feeling of power. He was practically a king - HE decided who got flushed. His finger-point was like the hand of God and even a couple lower-status second-graders feared its wrath.  
  
And he got an entire table of desserts. Score.  
  
By the time he got a little older, little bigger, he had kids kneeling in front of the toilet if he even looked at them.  _That_ was power.   
  
That was before he even had the mohawk, too, back when he had the crappy Jewfro his mom obsessively washed and his da tried to style to look like Gene Simmons. Once he became Puckasawrus? Un-freaking-stoppable. Nothing could kick Puckzilla's ass.  
  
Except that one thing.  
  
He'd never admit to anyone that his head till perked up when he saw an Impala like his dad drove, or the blue van the band used to take. Nevermind that no way was the badass lame enough to still have that crappy van after a decade. And the first time he threw a kid in a dumpster when he was 12, it definitely wasn't because he'd just seen someone driving the Impala around town with the same ancient Pearl Jam bumper sticker his dad's car had. The loser had it coming - no one looked Puckzilla in the eye and lived to tell about it. When people heard what he'd done, no one made that mistake again. That was totally the reason.  
  
Kind of like the reason he kept scanning the halls now was a surveillance instinct while he made sure the slushie war was really over. He was like Korean border patrol ready to take on the enemy or something. And he definitely wasn't looking for some weird hat weaving its way down the hall - that would be lame. Beyond lame; fucking pathetic. That's what some weak little heartbroken homo would do, and no one called Puckerone 'weak' and got away with it.  
  
Fists clenching, he grabbed the first kid he saw and started dragging him outside. The guy was pleading with him, offering him all kinds of help with his homework, lunch money...Puck liked hearing him beg almost as much as he loved the way everyone else reacted to hearing the kid beg - they quaked with freaking fear now that they knew social order was being restored up in this place.   
  
This was good. Things had been soft for way too long. This was the way things were meant to be.  
  
The clank of the guy's shoes against the metal rim of the dumpster, the crunch of paper and boxes and styrofoam trays? That was the sound of order being restored.  
  
Nothing could kick Puckzilla's ass.  
  
* * * * *  
  
It took Blaine calling his name three times before he looked up. By the time he did, the older boy looked bemusedly concerned. "What's up?"  
  
"Nothing," Kurt replied cooly. "Sorry."  
  
"Thinking deep thoughts?"  
  
While Kurt couldn't remember the entire train his thoughts had taken, he did know it started with trying to catch up on his chemistry homework and ended with remembering the first time Puck kissed him against the lockers at school, feeling so nervous and hesitant but with this almost... _pride_  in Puck wanting to show him off, make them public. Now he wouldn't return texts - or calls. Or answer the door when he'd tried showing up the previous evening. "Not really," he replied.  
  
It wasn't the very first Blaine had seen of the sad ice queen veneer, but it still threw him a little. He pulled up a chair and sat across from him. "So how's your first week going?"  
  
"Great."  
  
"Then why do you look almost as bad as the first conversation we had?" he asked. "Look, don't worry - you'll be able to catch up. I remember my first month here I felt so far behind, but it's not nearly as much work as it seems like, I promise."  
  
"Oh, it's not that. That's intense, but...do-able," Kurt explained. When Blaine kept looking to him for an explanation, he felt like maybe he should offer one, but he wasn't entirely sure how. His entire life, when pressed for an answer to what was wrong, what was bothering him, what horrible thing had happened, he'd offered a short, distant summation that conveyed limited information and even more limited emotion. He wasn't sure yet how to sum up the entire situation with Puck in a nice, two-sentence bite. "It's about a boy," he offered finally.  
  
While he knew logically that things would be different at Dalton, it still threw him for a minute when Blaine's response was "Isn't it always?" in a knowing tone. Usually that line made the person he was talking to run for the hills. "What's going on?"  
  
"The guy I've been-" ...Dating? Fucking? Was there a good word for something between those two? "-seeing isn't happy that I transferred schools," he explained.  
  
"He goes to your old school?"  
  
"Yes. When I went to tell him that everything was final, he threw me out and won't speak to me." They were going on ten days of silence now. he had expected the intense feeling of missing Puck would dissipate slowly but if anything it seemed to be getting more intense. Or maybe that was the resentment over the rejection.   
  
"He normally a jerk?" Blaine asked with a barely-veiled look of concern, and Kurt had a feeling that next would be a lecture about how he should have better even though the Warbler still barely knew him and certainly didn't know what he'd be like as a boyfriend.   
  
"Not to me," Kurt replied. Not really, at least. ...Not at all, actually, if he were to tell the truth. Puck was an absolute jerk to anyone who wasn't on his team, the people who were on his team got a little closer, and he...he was special. He knew that much. Puck wasn't a jerk to him - if anything, Puck actively tried  _not_  to be a jerk, at least as much as Puck knew how.   
  
"Is it a jealousy thing?"  
  
"No," Kurt said automatically, then thought about it. Puck was territorial enough that maybe it was a problem. They weren't exclusive, at least not officially, but Puck hadn't started sleeping with Santana again until he was kicking him out, and maybe Puck was still threatened by the idea of Kurt at a school surrounded by cute boys in uniforms who could sing, at least a few of whom were openly gay and several more of whom were at least heteroflexible. Maybe the thing with Santana was to try to test him, to make him force the issue and say-  
  
Probably not. Something about it just felt off. Like it was a reasonable explanation but not the right one.  
  
"Defection to the enemy?"  
  
"No, that's what the rest of them say, but it's not Puck's problem."  
  
"Puck?" Blaine asked with a look that said he was trying very hard not to laugh at the moniker.  
  
"His last name's Puckerman. That's not the point."  
  
"Right. Okay, so is it an abandonment thing? Like you're leaving him there where it sucks and ditching him to go somewhere better?"  
  
Kurt shook his head. Things had gotten better for Puck at school around the time things for him got exponentially worse. The slushies died down around the end of the second week after they revealed themselves as a couple, but then the shoving started. The locker-hurtling, bone-crunching good times, the paranoia about catching Kurt's gayness, the comments about him converting all the straight guys...and the scrotum necklace. He wondered for a moment if, just as the attention had shifted to him when it became clear that Puck was somehow the less culpable of the two, attention and bullying had shifted back to Puck now that he was no longer a viable schoolday target. He would have to ask Quinn later. In either even, that wouldn't make sense either since Puck started avoiding him before he'd even left.   
  
Unless...was Puck maybe getting more crap than Kurt knew about? After all, he downplayed the bullying because he didn't want Puck to worry about him - assuming, of course, that Puck worried about him at all. Was Puck getting more shit than he was but hiding it better? He found it unlikely, since the story would get back to him; at the very least, Finn would use it as further demonstration of his toxicity. But that  _would_  require that his friends notice it in the first place, and they apparently never noticed how badly he was getting his ass kicked since they still didn't understand why he'd left. Maybe that was it.  
  
But if that was the case, wouldn't Puck be better off with him at a different school?  
  
"I wish I knew," Blaine said. "It's hard, not knowing the guy or anything."  
  
"Even knowing him doesn't make it much easier," Kurt replied. There were times that their edict about not talking really didn't work.  
  
After all, how was he supposed to know why Puck wasn't talking if they didn't talk about why he didn't talk?  
  
* * * * *  
  
He wanted to make it very clear, it wasn't that he didn't want to have sex with Santana.  
  
The girl was smokin and knew exactly what he liked. And even though the fact that her tits moved kind of weird now that they were fake, they were still big and boobs and fun to play with. He dug the way she practically attacked him with her mouth, like she was too horny to wait for him, and he appreciated the whole self-lubricating thing a lot more now than he used to.  
  
But a lot of it with her was so...going through the motions.   
  
He was a horny teenage guy, no way was he ever gonna turn down getting his dick sucked, and she was damn good at it. But all he could think of was how much Kurt got off on it - the way he got so hard he looked like he might seriously come with seriously two quick jerks. The high moans from deep in his throat that sent vibrations through Puck's entire body. The intensity of it, like Kurt was seriously craving his cock - too fucking hot.  
  
Santana looked like it was something she was doing to prove a point. And yeah, it got him off - she did the thing with her tongue that always did it for him - but it wasn't as intense. A couple notches better than jerking off but not as good as really hot nastiness.  
  
She spat into the nearby trashcan then slithered up his body, neck swaying, with a smirk like she'd managed to single-handedly convert him back from the dark side with that blowjob. Like she figured once he'd gotten head from Kurt it would take some serious skill to get him off to anything else. Please - he was still a guy. She gave him a devouring kiss that distracted him from thinking about the guy...for a minute, at least.  
  
He didn't get it. He'd fucked practically every girl in school and just about every woman in town. He was a stud, and he was hung up on some stupid guy?  
  
Whatever. Dude made his choice and would be stuck with his hand for awhile. Puckasawrus, meanwhile, was a stud and would be bedding every chick he could find - starting with Santana.  
  
"You wanna stay awhile?" Puck asked casually when Santana sat up and started to slick her hair back into its usual perfect ponytail.  
  
She snorted and her head twitched to the side. "You ready for round two already?"  
  
"Nah, just...y'know. Hang out."  
  
She looked over her shoulder at him like there was something quaint about it but she found it disgusting coming from Puck. "Hang out?" she repeated.  
  
"Yeah. Listen to music or something."  
  
"Right," she laughed. "And then talk about our feelings? God, he really did turn you gay."  
  
"Oh come on-"  
  
"There's fucking guys? Then there's  _gay_."  
  
"Whatever. Like you can talk."  
  
"Uh, yeah, 'cause that's hot. And bumping uglies with Brittany doesn't mean I start driving a truck or stop shaving my legs." She stood and pulled on her underwear, meaning she wasn't just going straight to Brittany's after. "You wanting to be all soft and 'talk'?" she used air quotes. "That's just gross."   
  
He didn't care enough to come up with a stinging retort. He heard the front door close, and the silence of the empty house echoed around him.  
  
* * * * *  
  
While Kurt appreciated that his first week at Dalton happened to be a four-day week because of some teacher in-service day that Friday, he didn't necessarily need a day of hanging out in his basement, draping himself across every chair in turn in a dramatic representation of his ennui.  
  
Day eleven and still no response.   
  
He'd driven by Puck's house the night before hoping to confront him, plead with him, explain to him why he was being a jerk and a moron, but Santana's car was in the driveway. It was pretty easy to spot - it was the only car in town more expensive than his and had a license plate that read "HDCHEER10" - Head Cheerio. Clearly her daddy hadn't bothered to update the plates since September. He considered waiting around for her to leave, since God knows she never stayed very long, but ultimately concluded no. If Puck wasn't returning his many calls and texts, it meant Puck didn't want to speak to him. Puck was over him, and he was going to have to learn to deal with that. Somehow.  
  
He just couldn't shake the feeling that he was still missing something. That maybe Blaine was right and there was something deeper, some other side to the story.  
  
Except he was still angry. And hurt. And wanting to grab Puck by the shoulders and shake him and demand to know what the hell was wrong with him that he thought it was okay to just crap on someone's dream like that.  
  
"Hey, Kurt? You still gonna help me with this stuff?" Burt called from the top of the stairs, and Kurt peeled himself off the couch, pocketed his phone, and went upstairs. His dad stood in the living room surrounded by boxes. "I take that as a yes?" he asked when he saw Kurt.  
  
"I said I wouldn't, didn't I?" Kurt replied noncommittally. With the impending Hudson-Hummel wedding just around the corner, and the move-in date approaching rapidly, they needed to start making room for two houses to become one. Even though Carole and Finn talked about how much larger the Hummel house was than their own, it really wasn't - it just had a weird floorplan that made everything bigger seem smaller. Plus the extra bathroom, which would make things useful when there were four people in the house instead of two.  
  
Though if anyone - especially Finn - thought they were using his private bathroom in the basement, where all of his products were neatly stored and cataloged, they were out of their mind.  
  
"So," he said. "Where do we start?"  
  
Burt nodded towards the kitchen. "If you wanna start there - you know what we use and what we don't."  
  
"You mean what I use?" Kurt replied with a small smile. He took a box and started in that direction while his dad started on the junk drawers that hadn't been cleaned since approximately the second century. "Do you know what things Carole's keeping?"  
  
"On pots and stuff? I dunno. Ask her tonight, I guess."   
  
Kurt nodded and opened the cabinets. There were very few dishes - they didn't need many as a family of two. He supposed they'd need more now. Should probably get a four-setting set instead of piece-mealing it like this. He took out the lone cup that remained from the set his mom had used and cradled it in his hand. He and his dad knew to keep it safe; the others had gotten broken over the years, and this one was sort of...off-limits except on really bad days. He had this vision of coming upstairs one morning to see Carole drinking her morning coffee from it and it kind of-  
  
"You okay?" Burt asked as he looked over.  
  
"Sure," Kurt replied as he put the cup one shelf higher and pushed it towards the back. He could find it there, but Finn would really have to dig to end up with it and would probably deride it as being too girly anyway.   
  
"You're fine with all this stuff, right? Y'know, Carole and...and Finn moving in?" he asked.  
  
Kurt put on his best mask and replied, "Of course, Dad. It would be pretty strange if you got married and they still lived across town, right?"  
  
Burt didn't buy it. "Yeah, but it's still a big change."  
  
"I guess." He packed away a few of the tumblers he didn't particularly care about, a couple extra coffee mugs to make more room for the Hudsons' glasses and such, then moved to the silverware drawer. A person only needed so many steak knives, right?  
  
"You know if there's anything you wanna keep - there's only so much space in the garage so we may get rid of some stuff, if there's anything you want to be really sure stays here, just say it."  
  
"Photos and things," Kurt replied with a shrug, and the look on his dad's face made clear that was a given. He drew in a deep breath and ventured, "And use Carole's dresser? I-I know she got rid of her old bedroom set back when I was first playing matchmaker last year, but her clothes must have been somewhere for the last year."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Yes." He wasn't sure how to say the next part without feeling like a complete idiot, but the clueless look on his father's face meant he had to say something or he risked- "The broken one. It..."  
  
"Still smells like your mom," Burt concluded quietly, mouth forming a tight line.  
  
He knew he shouldn't have been surprised that his dad knew that - after all, he opened it every day to get out his tshirts and socks. But part of him felt like maybe he'd been imagining it all these years and the smell was long gone.   
  
"Yeah," Kurt murmured.  
  
"Don't worry - we'll keep it," Burt said with a clap on the shoulder before changing topics, albeit not to a much happier subject. "So things with you and Finn. They gonna be a problem?"  
  
"I don't know. You'd have to ask him," Kurt replied in a tight, cryptic voice.  
  
"How're things going now?"  
  
"Mutually-beneficial avoidance."  
  
"Might not work so well once they're here," Burt said, looking displeased. "He said he's cool camping on the couch til we get the attic finished, though."  
  
"Yes, Dad, and I told you - you're not up to-"  
  
"That's why I'm drafting you guys to lift things."  
  
"I'm not kidding. The doctors-"  
  
"The doctor has seen me once a week for the last two months and cleared me to go back to work. It's not like I'm knocking out a wall, we're just redoing the attic. For now, y'know. Might change it later, it's not that tall and the poor kid'll hit his head. Long as I got you two hauling the drywall up the stairs, I can handle the rest."  
  
Kurt wasn't sure he believed him, but he didn't protest further.  
  
"He's not still giving you a hard time about stuff though?"  
  
Kurt knew if he said yes, his father would seriously call off the wedding. That was...nice, he thought, kind of? But at the same time more pressure than he needed. "He hasn't said anything since dinner," he replied honestly.  
  
"Good," Burt nodded gruffly, then offered, "I haven't seen that kid around lately."  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Mohawk. Usually attached to your face."  
  
"Right," Kurt said sadly as he focused on selecting which serving and cooking spoons were necessary and which were just keeping the drawer cluttered.  
  
"You guys break up or something?"  
  
"Something like that," he replied tightly.  
  
"'m sorry," Burt said, but his tone was sincere. He studied his son's wistful expression and added a soft, "Hurts, doesn't it?"  
  
"Yes," Kurt whispered, staring straight ahead.  
  
"Wish I could tell you that part gets easier." Kurt couldn't really imagine his dad getting his heart broken in high school - he was a stud jock and, he got the impression, dated quite a few different girls before he met the woman who would become his wife. "Never easy, y'know, someone you care about not being in your life anymore," he added awkwardly, like he wasn't sure how to approach it because they were both guys but like he was trying. "It fades, but you lose someone else and it's as bad as the last one."  
  
"Yeah." He sniffed and selected two of the three slotted spoons to pack away, putting them in the box on top of the unused plates.  
  
"You know, that's the thing I'm most...worried about," Burt mused, and Kurt's ears perked up. 'Worried' was a big enough word for his dad, and Kurt had paid attention long enough to know it was his dad's code for 'scared shitless but not about to say it'. "With all this? I couldn't handle going through with Carole what I went through with your mom, y'know?"  
  
"I know the feeling," Kurt replied quietly. The entire week of sitting by his unconscious father's bedside, he'd been absolutely terrified of losing his dad the way he'd lost his mom - it wasn't just about being alone, it was so much bigger than that. It was the thing Finn hadn't understood at all - he hadn't lost someone like that. He hadn't gone through someone being there and then being gone. He only knew what it was like to miss the  _idea_  of someone, and Mercedes knew what it was like to be afraid of losing someone she loved but not when it was an actual distinct possibility.   
  
No, the only person who had understood had been-  
  
His head snapped up. "I've gotta go," he said quickly, closing the drawer.  
  
"What's going on?"  
  
"I- I'll be back before family dinner, I promise, and I'll help you finish this on Sunday. But I think I may have made a terrible mistake - not a mistake, so much as I said and did something that someone took the wrong way, so I need to-" He shoved his feet into his oxfords and grabbed a jacket from the hook by the door.  
  
"Be careful."  
  
"Got it," Kurt replied as he raced out to his car and drove quickly towards McKinley. He had to talk to Puck - now that he knew what was wrong he could fix this. 


	2. Chapter 2

Kurt waited impatiently outside the door he knew Puck most often used. Puck wasn't going to answer his texts, he knew that already, and unless he managed to convince Sarah to let him in, going to the house would prove equally fruitless. But confronting him somewhere he couldn't weasel out of it - even if it was just to then drag him into the SUV to continue the conversation if Puck didn't want to have it in public...it was his only option.  
  
The final bell rang and he watched his former classmates stream out of the doors. His heart clenched and he felt the paranoia and overly-uptight feeling returning like a Pavlovian response. Though he felt like he should remember this feeling for the next time he questioned the wisdom of his transfer, he had more important tasks ahead of him. He searched the sea of heads for a familiar stripe of black but saw nothing. He doubted he was sufficient grounds for Puck to shave his mohawk, but maybe-  
  
"Kurt!" Quinn's voice cut through the din of conversation as she made her way to him. "What are you doing here?"  
  
"I have to fix things," he said cryptically, his eyes still searching.  
  
"He's not here."  
  
Kurt's head snapped in her direction. "What?"  
  
"He went out the door by the gym, I passed him on the way to my locker." Kurt started to turn that direction, but Quinn said, "Someone tipped him off you were here."  
  
"Why would-"  
  
"Santana saw you. She sent us all a text."  
  
"She already got him back in bed, what more does she freaking want?" he demanded angrily.   
  
"To keep him? To win? To beat you every chance she gets?" Kurt rolled his eyes and she added, "Sweetie...not that I ever mind seeing you, but...if he won't talk to you on the phone or at his house, what made you think he would talk to you here?"  
  
"I figured out what happened," Kurt said. "At least, I think I did. But- No. This is good. Now I can do recon before I try to speak with him. I need you to tell me about his dad."  
  
Quinn's eyes widened. "And you think that's going to make things better instead of imploding?" she asked skeptically.  
  
"Not so we can have a deep conversation about him or anything. I screwed up and I need to know how many shots I took without meaning to." Just because he thought he'd identified the key area to the problem didn't mean he knew exactly which nerves he'd hit - or how to avoid hitting further ones when he went to explain.   
  
She looked him in the eye, trying to figure out if he really was as crazy as she thought, then said slowly, "I'm sorry, I honestly don't know."  
  
"You've known him longer and better than-"  
  
"I didn't know him that early. I was still at St. Andrews when his dad left. By the time I came here in seventh grade, Puck was already... _Puck_. I know exactly as much as you do - what he said before he sang during Theatricality week is the only thing I've ever heard him say about it."  
  
"Dammit," Kurt mumbled with a sigh. He needed more, he needed details. Something. A way of knowing if his hunch was correct about precisely what had screwed it up. If Quinn - who knew Puck best - didn't know... "Rachel might know, I guess. At the very least from gossip around Temple, right?"  
  
"There's someone else," Quinn said quietly with a pointed look.  
  
Kurt felt like he might choke. "No. You cannot be serious. Telling me to talk to-"  
  
"I'm not. But if you're determined to ask someone about Puck's dad, I'm saying the only person I know who would know?"  
  
"Yeah," Kurt said quietly, defeated.  
  
"I don't blame you for not wanting to talk to him. Given everything that's gone on... _I_  couldn't talk to him about something like that at this point, and he didn't go around trying to drag my name through the mud to the entire school even though in retrospect he kind of had a right to. With you and Puck?"  
  
"Yeah." He flicked back his hair and drew in a deep breath. "I should go. But thank you." He flashed a brief smile then walked back to his car.   
  
Kurt drove quickly over to the Hudson home. Carole was at work, but he let himself in with the key she'd given him, then stormed up to Finn's room. He barged in without knocking and was glad to find the teen doing nothing more private than playing some video game. He could only imagine how Finn's twisted mind would've manipulated that one. "Dude!" Finn exclaimed as Kurt slammed the door shut behind him. "What the hell?"  
  
"Tell me about Puck's dad," he demanded. Finn's indignance could wait.  
  
Finn's eyes narrowed and he went back to playing the game. "We don't talk about that stuff. Dads are off-limits. How would you like it if he came over here and said, 'Dude, tell me about Kurt's dead mom.'"  
  
It was a low blow and intended as such, and Kurt hated that he'd gotten used to Finn enough to halfway expect it. Finn fought dirty like that, even if he was the only one who ever seemed to see it. "It's important."  
  
"Everything with you is important," Finn replied dismissively.  
  
"I really don't want to have to resort to threats of blackmail, but I have more than enough ammunition. If you're going to keep being this much of an obstructionist-"  
  
"Would you just get out of here already? Jeez, dude, I can't even be by myself in my own room for another like two weeks?"  
  
Kurt knew exactly where this was about to go. "I hurt him and I need you to give me a freaking answer so I can know exactly how many raw nerves I stomped on. If you don't help my next stop is Rachel, and not only will she probably get half the information wrong, but she'll be pretty unhappy with you for being such an ass about it."  
  
Finn seemed to consider this for a minute before grunting out, "Fine."  
  
"...Fine?" Kurt repeated.  
  
"What do you want to know? I don't remember much."  
  
"How old was he - were you?"  
  
Finn thought. "Like 9? I dunno, Sarah was a baby. I think. He may have come back again or something."  
  
"So he-" Kurt swallowed and restarted. "He didn't just walk out, he was back and forth?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Probably said something along the lines of he'd be back, he wasn't going away for good, nothing would change, he'd still see him just as often?" he asked, thinking back to the fateful conversation. He had a feeling he knew the answer already.  
  
"I dunno, dude. Maybe. I guess. I wasn't there or anything."  
  
"Right," Kurt replied slowly, his mind reeling. Surely enough, he'd hit about every sore spot he could. And of all the times to pick to start calling him Noah? What an idiot he'd been. Not that he'd legitimately had any way of knowing most of the details, but he felt like she should have known better somehow. Like he had enough background information to at least think of the potential issues before he said anything. He could have handled it differently, even if he wasn't entirely sure how, or at least clued Puck in before springing it on him like that with no chance to prepare - just to react.  
  
But now he knew. So it was just a matter of figuring out how to fix it.  
  
"Why do you care?" Finn asked.  
  
Kurt wasn't sure whether to be dumbstruck or furious. Was Finn really that blind? That naive? That stupid? He bit back his first two responses - "Why don't you?" and an inappropriately premature declaration of how he might feel about Puck someday - and said, "If you pissed of Rachel, you wouldn't care why she wasn't taking your calls?"  
  
"If he's not talking to you, it means he doesn't want-"  
  
"That's bullshit," Kurt replied. "You didn't answer my question. If Rachel was angry at you and wouldn't take your calls, wouldn't you want to know why?" He didn't add that, if this went on much longer, she wouldn't be speaking to Finn for the foreseeable future and he would be more than happy to explain why.  
  
"Usually I just say I'm sorry, and she gives me a lecture or something, and I nod and try not to fall asleep. Then she makes me watch a musical - she says it's to bond, but I think it's punishment."  
  
Right. Because Finn was basically a golden retriever puppy and he could get away with that, especially with Rachel who dominated even the most equal of conversations, Kurt reminded himself. That response hadn't been a blow-off - it was honest. And pathetic. "It won't work that way with Puck. I have to actually know what I'm apologizing for and go out of my way to fix it."  
  
"How do you know he even wants to talk to you? Maybe he's trying to get you to leave him alone but you won't."  
  
Kurt drew in a deep breath and did his very best not to call Finn a homophobic moron and storm out. If they were going to be stuck under the same roof, he needed to actually fix this instead of keeping the constant avoidance and tension. Not that  _he_  cared, but his father did and the last thing his father needed was more to worry about right now. "When you said what you did last year-"  
  
Finn rolled his eyes and groaned. "Dude, would you stop bringing up-"  
  
"Let me finish. When you said that - not just the word, but everything that led up to it, every mean, insecure, and obnoxious word from questioning my sanity onward - whatever feelings I had for you went away. Completely vanished. The image I had of you, how different I thought you were from everyone else, was shattered. The bubble popped. Puck lashed out and said crappy things to me, but I don't care. For one thing, he had every opportunity to take cheap shots and didn't. With anyone else, he would have. He treats me differently than he treats anyone except his family, and if this were some one-sided schoolboy crush that wouldn't be the case. He would throw me in dumpsters like he always used to - Puck has never been someone who suffers annoyance gladly, he wouldn't be afraid to tell me to go to hell. For another, I've already seen his imperfections and I still want to be with him. It was never that way with you. You were a fantasy; Puck is real." He paused to draw in a slow breath before he added, "Rest assured: I would never have gone to this much trouble to get you to stop being mad at me." He shook his head. "Not that I expect you to understand."  
  
Finn looked thoughtful. "Kinda like how I can't really hate Quinn 'cause I loved her and probably always will," he mused, and while Kurt didn't see the correlation by any stretch of the imagination, as long as it got Finn to a place where  _he_  understood, that was what mattered.  
  
"Kind of?" The look on Finn's face was one of a revelation, like it suddenly occurred to him that two men could love each other instead of one just pursuing the other for unreciprocated sex.  
  
Really? What the fuck had taken him this long?  
  
"If you'll excuse me, I have to go figure out how to get him to listen to my apology," Kurt said, then added his peace offering, "See you at dinner."  
  
* * * * *  
  
He shouldn't have been so disappointed by the prospect of a Saturday night sitting alone in his room, he thought as he glared at the clock on his laptop defiantly. It wasn't as though he had ever been a particularly social guy, owing largely to the fact that he hadn't really had any close friends before glee club. Until a year ago, he had spent almost every Saturday night in his room with DVDs while he tried to tune out whatever game was on tv upstairs and yelled at his dad for once again eating almost an entire large double-cheese pizza.  
  
If his father had only listened to his repeated "You're going to kill yourself, eating like that!", the year might have gone a lot differently.  
  
But with the knowledge that he  _had_  friends, they just weren't speaking to him, and in contemplating whether Puck might be home - unlike the previous evening, when Sarah had answered the door and he hadn't wanted to explain to her  _and_  Mrs. Puckerman (whom he'd never met before) why he was there, he simply teased Sarah for a couple minutes then told her to have Puck call him - the basement felt unwieldly quiet.   
  
The text from Quinn was a welcome surprise.  _Movie night. Sam's house. Get here._  
  
While he wasn't wild about hanging out as the third wheel with a couple who, by their own admission, didn't really  _watch_  the movies during movie night, and though he generally wasn't a huge fan of the kind of comic book fantasy films that Sam tended towards, he figured it was better than reading Broadway fanfiction all night.  
  
Like he needed that much drama these days.  
  
By the time he arrived at Sam's, thankful for his GPS because Quinn's directions were absolutely not useful, he realized he probably should have brought snacks or something. Oh well - it was too late now. Besides, if he showed up too late he risked that they would have started the movie without him, meaning they would have started something else without him...and unless Sam was bi and into V-triad-style threesomes, that wouldn't make for a very fruitful evening. Awkward about any way you slice it, really.  
  
He smiled faintly at the thought as he rang the doorbell and Quinn answered. "Hey," she smiled warmly but with a little bit of anxiousness.  
  
"Hello," Kurt replied, looking her up and down. She didn't look disheveled enough to believe he had interrupted something, so he wondered why she seemed nervous. Well...nervous in a Quinn way, which meant she seemed a little too pulled-together. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"  
  
"Of course not," she replied.  
  
That's when he heard it.  
  
Around school it was a joke that Mercedes' voice wasn't so much distinctive as just easily heard. It could cut through the hallways at school without any real effort, and when she laughed...  
  
Kurt froze, then slowly turned his head towards Quinn. She looked appropriately guilty, but he was livid. "What is this?" he asked, then heard Artie say something muffled, followed by laughter. He couldn't tell whose exactly, but definitely Mercedes and Sam and possibly Tina?  
  
"Look. You need your friends back, and they need to understand why you did what you did-"  
  
"You ambushed me," he replied tightly, turning to leave.  
  
"Only because you all needed to be in the same room and I knew you wouldn't show up otherwise. But Kurt- I understand. I get why you went to Dalton and I know it wasn't just because everyone was throwing you around. Last year...the only place I felt like I wasn't something horrible to be ashamed of was in my Unwed Mothership Connection group. If it weren't for the fact that I knew I was giving her up, I would have probably transferred to their school program just because it felt so good to not have to explain or apologize to every person I saw, to not be stared at, treated like a freak?" She touched his arm but he wouldn't look at her. "They're so used to it that they don't realize there's anything else out there. So if they don't understand that, and they don't know how bad the bullying was...how are they meant to understand?" Kurt finally met her gaze, albeit sullenly. "Please. Just come watch the movie. Talk to them. There's no reason you being at Dalton means you have to be the enemy."  
  
Kurt drew in a deep breath and slipped on his mask, and she cringed watching it. She fully understood why he had to steel himself like that, but it didn't mean she didn't hate it. She knew how it felt and how simultaneously frustrating and necessary it was to need to be safe like that. Maybe this really had been a bad idea. He thought he was getting a relaxing night and now he was putting up defenses. She led him into the living room, where Mercedes, Artie, Tina, Mike, and Sam were sprawled on couches and chairs around a big-screen tv that surpassed what even his father had. "Hey, dude," Sam grinned as they entered. "Glad you could make it."  
  
All conversation in the room stopped as the other four stared at him. "What's  _he_  doing here?" Mercedes demanded.  
  
"Don't you have other people to hang out with? You know, a group of two dozen guys you can tell all our secrets to?" Tina added.  
  
Artie just glowered at him from behind his thick glasses.  
  
"You guys, this stops now," Quinn said firmly. "Kurt's one of us whether he's at McKinley or not."  
  
"Not when he ditches us two weeks before Sectionals to join our competition," Mike replied.  
  
"It's not like he planned it that way," Sam defended. "Right?" he added with an encouraging look like he was trying to give Kurt a good opening to explain why he wasn't a traitor. Not that it was much help.  
  
"I'm not going there to exact revenge. If my scholarship didn't require that I compete with the group in all major competitions, I wouldn't even join them until after Sectionals," Kurt replied coldly. They'd been through this before, and just as no one believed him at the time, he doubted anyone would believe him now.  
  
"How do we know that? How do we know we're not gonna show up the day of and find them doing half our songs, like last year?" Mike asked.  
  
Kurt shook his head. He wasn't going to be able to prove it to them, anyway; he should quit now, save the rest of his evening, and chalk the entire thing up to yet another of life's grand disappointments. "Thanks for the invitation, Quinn, Sam, but I think I'm going to just-"  
  
"No," Quinn replied in her best Head Cheerio voice, the one that said "No one leaves this room until I'm happy with everyone's performance." The one that she had learned a little too well from one Sue Sylvester. "How many gay guys are there at Dalton?" she asked.  
  
He had to admit it wasn't the question he was expecting, and it threw him for a moment. "Five that I've met so far, but I'm guessing there are more. Blaine, this guy Charlie who makes me look kind of tame, a really macho guy in my English class, and one actual couple I don't really know but have seen holding hands in the hall. They're seniors."  
  
"Wait, seriously?" Tina asked, surprised. "Six in the school?"  
  
"At least."  
  
"So it really is a big gay school?" Mike asked, but without the venom that most guys would use.  
  
"More like a big tolerant school. People aren't afraid to be out there. Unlike McKinley, where statistically speaking there's no way I'm the only one, but no one's going to say it because they see what happens to me. No one in their right mind would set themselves up to be mocked and humiliated like that if they could help it."  
  
"I heard about the pigs," Artie offered quietly. That one had surpassed even the worst anyone had done to him, and that was saying quite a bit. Though being on the football team made things easier now, and Puck and his buddies were the only ones who had really tortured him to begin with; most of the school got that it probably wasn't okay to pick on the guy in a wheelchair. It was kind of the double-edged sword of being stuck there.  
  
"Yes. The festive necklace was just the tip of the iceberg," Kurt sniffed. Even thinking about it made him bitter, let alone the knowledge that his friends had known about it and neither made sure he was okay nor understood why he would want to leave a place where that was considered perfectly acceptable behaviour.  
  
"But aren't you used to it by now?" Tina asked. "I mean, it's kind of normal for Karofsky to shove people around. I still don't get why you had to leave."  
  
The fact that Quinn had been right about his teammates' ignorance didn't reassure him. It made him angry. When Tina got shoved around, he stood up for her. If he knew someone was harassing Artie he would step in without hesitation, no matter how much bigger than him the guy was. If anyone so much as tried to lay a hand on Mercedes he would do literally anything in his power to keep her from getting hurt. He was getting shoved into lockers so hard he got bruises that lasted a week and none of them even  _noticed_? "I shouldn't have to be used to it," he replied, his tone clipped and icy. "No one should have to be  _used to_  being thrown into a locker five times a day."  
  
Mercedes had stayed stonily silent through the conversation with an almost sulking glare of abandonment aimed in his direction. But at that, her head snapped up. "Why didn't you say anything?" she demanded.  
  
"Why?" Kurt asked, tossing out the question like it didn't matter.  
  
"What do you mean, why? You don't think we would've had your back on-"  
  
He felt tears threatening and tried to will them back, or at least keep them welling in his eyes instead of a full-on sobfest. "I know you believe that," he said quietly. "You really do, and I appreciate that you want to help. But you've never noticed before. Why would now be any different?"  
  
If she looked hurt before, now she looked like he'd slapped her. "How can you even say that?"  
  
"Because it's true," he stated, but it was obvious from his tone how much he wished it weren't.   
  
"Why didn't you say anything before, then? If it was that bad and we weren't doing anything-"  
  
Kurt choked out a bitter laugh. "What good would that do? Airing my problems for the world to see - crying about people being mean to me like the epitome of some pathetic-...It's not as though you could fend off Azimio or Karofsky anyway. And believe me, if they hit you too? No one would do anything about it. It was my problem to deal with. In this case, it became such that I decided the best way to deal with it was to take myself out of the situation. I can be safe at Dalton - and happy."  
  
The look on Mercedes' face made him almost want to take it all back. She looked so...so  _stricken_  by it all, like her entire view of their friendship had been shattered in one fell swoop. It was worse than the look when he'd told her he didn't believe in God. That she could deal with, she could try to convert him on and drive him crazy all week with her insistence on praying. But this? She didn't have a fix for being told she'd essentially been an oblivious friend for a year and a half.   
  
As much as the look hurt him...he couldn't take it back because he knew he was right. If he were wrong, she'd look more angry than devastated anyway.  
  
"Let's just start the movie," Artie suggested quietly with an apologetic look in Kurt's direction.  
  
Kurt broke eye contact with Mercedes long enough to say, "That sounds good," and make his way to an empty spot on the floor between Tina and Mercedes. Tina leaned her head against his shoulder briefly in a silent apology, and she knew enough to check that she hadn't left any makeup on his sweater when she sat up. The gesture made him smile a little. He leaned back against the front of the couch and settled in to watch the movie. He vaguely understood the general premise - his dad had tried to get him the action figures that changed into cars when he was a kid, until he started trying to build his own using boxes and dolls to turn Barbie into her own dream car - but had to admit he wasn't entirely sure what the point of the plot was. Mostly it just seemed like one giant CGI-fest...but Sam and Artie certainly enjoyed it, and Mike and Tina didn't seem to mind too much.  
  
Mercedes just kept staring at a spot to the right of the tv, occasionally reaching down to snag a handful of chips. That she was an emotional eater to some degree wasn't news to Kurt, but he didn't dare say anything; he'd already done enough this evening.  
  
About half an hour into the movie, the doorbell rang and Sam carefully disentangled himself from Quinn to go answer it. "Hey, dude, you made it," he grinned as the door opened. Kurt couldn't hear what the person had said, but he found himself trying to figure out who else was even around to be invited. It wouldn't be Brittany or Santana, he figured Quinn would put the kibosh on inviting Rachel, so that left Finn or-  
  
Kurt looked up to see Sam standing in the arched threshold of the living room, flanked by Puck. The room went silent except for the movie, which appeared to fade into the background. Puck looked...shocked. And miserable. And kind of trapped.   
  
They locked eyes and Kurt swallowed hard. This was his chance, they were stuck in the same place, maybe he could explain - even if all he really wanted to do was kiss him and cling in a way that he guaranteed would cause mockery. If he could just make the words come, he could fix this. But it was like suddenly everything he'd wanted to say just  _vanished_  and he was left with nothing. "Puck," he whispered.  
  
Puck turned and practically stormed towards the door. "Puck  _wait!_ " Kurt scrambled to his feet and raced after him.  
  
"Are you an idiot?" Quinn demanded of Sam, who was still standing in the doorway looking confused.  
  
"The dude's miserable, both of them are, I figured if they talked-"  
  
"You can't just shove a guy and his exboyfriend into a room without telling them first and expect them to start having make-up sex!"  
  
"You were setting up an intervention for everyone else to make up with Kurt, I figured-"  
  
"There's a difference between friends and a boyfriend, Sam!"  
  
"Not that much difference."  
  
Puck had almost reached his car by the time Kurt caught up with him. He wondered when Puck's mom had let him start driving it again - or if he had permission at all, really. "Puck, wait! I'm sorry I said-"  
  
Puck turned to glare at him. "Get away from me."  
  
"I want to apologize for-"  
  
Puck cut him off. "Finn was right - you really can't back off."  
  
Kurt's eyes widened and his mouth tightened, twisted. "I know what you're trying to do and it won't work," he stated defiantly, jaw set, as he tried not to let Puck see how much the low blow felt like a knife in his gut. He knew Puck was throwing out the most hurtful thing he could get away with, and he supposed he should be glad it wasn't a slur, but this was almost worse.  
  
"Why couldn't you leave my sister out of all this, huh?"  
  
Kurt almost got whiplash from the quick pivot of conversational direction. "What do you mean?"  
  
"Sarah said you came by the house yesterday. I don't want you talking to her."  
  
"You think I'll pump her full of blackmail information? If I wanted it, I have more than enough already - believe me."  
  
"She's a kid. She thinks you're coming back. She doesn't know any better. And when you show up like that-"  
  
"What?" Kurt demanded. "When I show up like that, what? She starts thinking I'll come back into her life the way you thought your dad would come back into yours?"  
  
One low blow deserved another, and more importantly the issues were on the table. The anger that flashed in Puck's eyes made Kurt seriously think for a minute that Puck might hit him, but the taller boy did not advance. His fingers clenched on the door handle and he ground out a "Shut the fuck up."  
  
The less-than-stellar comeback let Kurt know he'd definitely hit the nail on the head. "You can't just shut me out and then claim I walked away from you. And as much as you can try and pretend that you want me to back off, as many insults and references to what Finn says about me as you want to throw out, it doesn't change the fact that you want to be with me, too, and that scares you because you have a stack of abandonment issues a mile high. But because you're Puckzilla or whatever ridiculous nickname you want to give yourself this week, you're never going to admit to that; you're never going to admit that underneath all of the tough-guy crap you're still a terrified little boy who's convinced anyone you trust is going to betray you. While I get that as much as anyone, treating me like shit isn't going to make you feel any better - it's just going to reinforce your worldview that anyone you even remotely like is going to abandon you because that's easier than figuring out how to deal with actually being close to someone. Easier than fighting for someone."   
  
Puck's stony glare didn't change, and Kurt charged on. "Running away like this? Not answering texts? That's the coward's way out. That's what a kid does, not a man. It's what a punk does because he's scared."  
  
"You're questioning my badassness?" Puck demanded in a low growl, fingers clenching again around the handle.  
  
Kurt didn't back down. "Yes," he declared. "You think having Santana at your beck and call proves you're so big and bad? She'll sleep with anything. It's like proving you get Brittany into bed, it's hardly a challenge. Then what happens? They leave, but that's okay - you never expected anything else, right? Not from them. But with someone like Quinn, it hurts when you're alone because you thought they'd stay. Well, I tried to stay. You threw me out, but you try and cover it by saying I left first - that's bullshit and you know it. If you didn't know it, you would've told me to go fuck myself and left already. No; you're still here, which means you do like me, and you do miss me, but you're too chickenshit to say it. If you were a  _real_  badass you'd fight for me. You'd kiss me and drag me home with you to prove you could get me when you wanted me. But you just stand there and pretend you're not listening because you're too scared to-"  
  
Puck closed the distance between them in about three steps and pulled Kurt into a deep, rough kiss. The fingers of his right hand threaded through the hair at the base of Kurt's neck while his left hand splayed on his lower back, pulling him closer. Kurt whimpered softly in surprise and felt himself melt into the kiss, arms wrapping around Puck's back as Puck's tongue roughly probed his mouth. He had missed everything about this - the feel of Puck's strong arms around him, the taste of Puck's mouth that practically screamed 'teenage boy', the way Puck's light stubble felt on his soft skin, the feeling like Puck was trying to devour him-  
  
Then suddenly, just as quickly as it began, the kiss was over and Puck was gone. He got into his car, started the ignition, and pulled out of the driveway without so much as a glance, let alone a word, as Kurt stood on the front lawn, arms drawn tightly around himself, shivering in the cold November night air.  



	3. Chapter 3

He wasn't sure how long he stood in front of Sam's house after Puck drove off. He knew that, by the time Mercedes came out to check on him, his entire body felt numb except his mouth - he swore he could still feel where Puck's lips had been.  
  
He didn't know what had happened. Not like he'd blacked out; he remembered every millisecond of the kiss in freakishly accurate detail, from the slight flex of Puck's bicep as he pulled Kurt closer, to the sound of them both trying to draw in enough oxygen without separating their mouths, to the way he felt dizzy and surreal and like he might collapse any second. He remembered it all. He just had no idea what it  _meant_.  
  
Mercedes appeared seemingly out of nowhere and draped his coat around his shoulders. He hadn't heard her approach. "What happened?" she asked gently.  
  
"I don't know," he whispered, still staring at the empty spot where Puck's car had been. His fingers flexed absently until they found the corners of his coat and he pulled it tighter around himself.   
  
"He go?"  
  
Kurt blinked. A streak down each side of his face was colder than the rest - he was crying, he realized dully. That made sense, he cried over practically everything, and this was...this was something big, right? After all, if this was Puck storming out of the relationship and that meant it was over, then it was big. If it was Puck saying he wanted to stay and fight but only for so long...that was even bigger, even if he had no idea what that meant going forwards.  
  
It wasn't at all the reaction he'd expected.  
  
He tilted his head just a little and replied, "Yes," in a strangled voice.  
  
"C'mon, baby, let's get you inside," she urged. He nodded and followed her up onto the porch. He tried to pull himself together - he knew the rest of them were waiting just on the other side of the door to pepper him with questions, and at the absolute bare minimum he needed to be in a state where he could at least pretend to answer them. Even if he had no idea what the answers were, he needed to draw himself inward enough to feign certainty.  
  
Quinn was waiting inside with a cup of tea. "What happened?"  
  
"He left," Kurt replied softly. Each time he said it, it sounded a little less absurd. He tried to remember exactly what he'd said, in which order. He remembered something about Puck and Santana and how that didn't prove anything, and something about how a real badass would stay and fight for him, but what connected the two? Quinn, right? Maybe. Maybe he just called Puck a coward again there. But what was right before the kiss? A badass would stay and fight, and...would kiss him and drag him home to prove he wanted him? Was that what he said? Or was it just that a badass would kiss him? Because that made all the difference in the world. It was the difference between Puck proving himself and Puck proving the relationship.   
  
Why couldn't he remember? It was less than ten minutes ago - wasn't it? He was colder than he should've been after ten minutes, but it  _was_  Ohio in November.   
  
He vaguely knew he was being led into a small bedroom off a hallway he hadn't seen yet. "You want one of us to drive you home?" Quinn asked. She and Mercedes were the only ones in the room; he guessed Sam was keeping the others at bay somehow.   
  
"I'll be fine in a minute." He clutched the steaming mug between his hands, not caring that it was starting to burn his palms. Mercedes sat beside him on the bed while Quinn kept slightly more distance. The concerned look on their faces kind of made him nauseous - not because he didn't appreciate their concern, but because that meant his fear must be real: it really must be over. They wouldn't be looking at him like that if it wasn't over. Kind of like they wouldn't have had that look if his father was fine and about to wake up - it was a look that clearly meant things were bad. Really, really bad.  
  
Not that he could really compare his father almost dying and Puck...not really. That would be ridiculous, and he knew that. One he would absolutely not be able to survive, the other would just feel like that for awhile.  
  
"What happened?" Quinn asked gently. Mercedes just kept his hand on his arm, and he kind of wanted no one to touch him but he couldn't bring himself to tell her to go away. She was trying to be his best friend when he needed one, and she wasn't doing it in a way that was patently offensive; he supposed he should be grateful for that and accept it.  
  
"I called him out," Kurt replied. His voice sounded strange, distant, kind of numb. He stared into the mug but couldn't quite bring it to his mouth. "I said he was shoving me away so he could pretend I ditched him instead, and that if he wasn't a coward he would fight for me, kiss me and take me home with him." His voice faltered for the first time as he added, "He kissed me, then left."  
  
"What does that mean?" Mercedes asked. "Are you guys...I mean, he kissed you, that's gotta be a good sign, right?"  
  
"Then he left. What kind of a sign is that?"  
  
There was silence. Apparently Mercedes didn't know, either.  
  
"He got pissed at me for talking to his sister because she still thought I was coming back, and I just...I went there. Why the hell did I go there?" he asked rhetorically, and only Quinn had any idea what he was talking about. "And I think I brought up the two of you, too," he added, shaking his head. What the hell had possessed him to think that was even remotely the right thing to say? "That it hurt him when you left and that's why he keeps going back to people he knows won't stick around, because then he can't be disappointed."  
  
"Oh Kurt-"  
  
"Oh no, you don't have to say it - I'm an idiot," he stated with a very faint smile. "I should go." He set the untouched mug of tea on the small nightstand beside the bed "I apologize for being such a source of drama tonight. I promise not to be quite this high-maintenance if you have another movie night," he added, and both his friends could see he was trying desperately to put the walls back up. They knew him better than that...at least most of the time. And this was more obvious than most. "Mall after school on Monday? I have a feeling I'll be needing some serious retail therapy."  
  
"Sure," Mercedes replied. "Whatever you need."  
  
He brushed back his bangs stiffly and walked towards the door, but Quinn caught his elbow. "If you ever want me to return the favour from this summer, you know where to find me, right?" she asked quietly. Neither of them needed reminding what 'favour' she was referring to - they'd spent more than a few hours sitting her room, first at Mercedes' then at her mom's, mocking crappy movies and pretending not to notice when Quinn burst into tears that she blamed on hormones but they knew was mourning. He nodded but didn't think he would take her up on it, then trudged slowly to his car to drive home.  
  
"If he doesn't text in the next twenty minutes to let me know he got home safe, I'm calling his dad," Mercedes stated. "I don't care if he kills me after."  
  
"Good idea," Quinn replied, but that wasn't going to fix any of this. It would make sure he wasn't in some kind of immediate danger, which was important, but it wasn't a permanent solution of any kind.   
  
She had a feeling that kind of fix would fall to her - not necessarily by choice, not even because the rest of Kurt's friends weren't interested; from the hushed whispers just beyond the door, she could tell the cavalry was disappointed to have missed the chance to try to put Kurt together again. But this involved her too deeply for anyone else, even Finn, to help with.  
  
* * * * *  
  
When Sarah answered the door, the first thing Quinn was struck by was how much taller she was than she used to be. Last April she'd been a good four inches shorter. What a difference nine months made.  
  
Of course, she of all people knew that already.  
  
"What are you doing here?" she asked with a suspicious look that Quinn swore was genetic.  
  
"Is your brother home?"  
  
"Yeah, he's upstairs. He's all depressed over Kurt."  
  
She had forgotten Sarah's candor, and it made her smile a little. "Yeah, I know. Hey, do you still play with that neighbour across the street?"  
  
"Sometimes."  
  
"Think you could go over there for awhile?"   
  
Sarah started to look indignant, then relieved and gave a short nod. "Sure." She grabbed her coat. "I should do that when Santana comes over - she's  _really_  loud when she and my brother have-" She looked around to make sure there weren't any adults around to hear, or maybe to check that her mother wasn't secretly lurking; Quinn for one wouldn't be surprised. "-S-E-X," she spelled out in the pre-tween way that almost made Quinn laugh. She remembered all the ridiculous euphemisms at that age...back when she swore up and down she would never have it, and if she ever did it would be only to have babies with her husband.   
  
My how things had changed.  
  
"Careful crossing," Quinn reminded her as Sarah got to the street. The girl gave her a dirty look over her shoulder and rolled her eyes, as if to say 'Duh, I'm nine, not a moron!', then crossed. Quinn smiled faintly, then walked up to Puck's room. He was lying on his back on the bed, plucking his way slowly through chords on his acoustic guitar which looked awkward and uncomfortable in that position. "Get up - we're going somewhere," she stated.  
  
He sat up and looked at her like she was crazy. "I'm watching my sister."  
  
"Oh, I can tell," she replied sarcastically. "I sent Sarah to play with the little frilly psychopath across the street. Come on."  
  
Puck rolled his eyes and started to flop back onto the bed, but he really didn't have anything else to do. He was starting to get bored enough that math homework was sounding like a viable way to spend an afternoon. Math homework. That was just bad. Almost as bad as the fact that he wasn't even interested enough to bother calling up Santana, or that Melman chick who was back from college on some kind of break, and she was hot. With a sigh and a quirked eyebrow to make very clear this was totally his last choice of activity for the afternoon, he stood and toed on his shoes.  
  
Quinn had the good sense not to try to make small talk in the car, even about subjects Puck liked. Not that they'd ever been good at small talk. To be honest, she was more nervous than he was; she knew where they were going. The piece of paper with the address was worn, creased and uncreased so many times that the folds had started to feel more like soft flannel than rough notebook paper, and it took everything in her not to fiddle with it as they drove the 37 miles to their destination.  
  
It wasn't until they pulled into the driveway of the large house, with its perfectly manicured lawn and neatly-trimmed hedges, that Puck thought to ask, "The hell are we?" Then he spotted a familiar black SUV that he'd spent all summer folding crappy pillow cases in a lame apron to replace the tires on.   
  
He convinced himself he was imagining things and this was some other asshole with a pretentious vehicle - not like he didn't know a few personally - but the way Quinn drew in several deep breaths before getting out of the car, he had a sinking suspicion he was right.  
  
"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded as he got out.  
  
"Putting things behind us," she replied cryptically. This was either the best or worst idea she'd ever had, and she would have no way of knowing which it was until the afternoon was over.   
  
"You dragged me here? Why?"  
  
She didn't answer, just walked up to the front door with her best Cheerios game face. She started to ring the bell but saw a sign just above the button: "Shhh, she might be sleeping! Please knock instead." She did as the sign instructed and glanced back to look at Puck. He looked ready to kill her.  
  
She had a reason. She knew telling Puck why Kurt wasn't saying what he thought Kurt was saying wouldn't actually fix the underlying problems - of which Puck had a myriad - and while Beth wasn't the main issue at play here, she did kind of feed into plenty of the central insecurities that Quinn was reasonably certain had caused Puck's non-freak-out.   
  
At least in theory. In reality, she could just be scraping open old wounds and leaving him worse off than she found him while also torturing herself with all of it instead of working through her own process. Again, she would know in a couple days which way it had all turned out.  
  
Shelby answered with an uncharacteristic smile. They'd only ever seen her stern-faced in coach-mode with those soulless automatons she coached. Now she looked...human. And happy, if exhausted. "Hey you guys. Come in," she said as she stepped back to let them into the entryway. "I know I said she'd probably be awake by 4, but she got down a little late today so she's still asleep. But you're welcome to wait if you want, she should be up soon."  
  
"Sure," Quinn replied.  
  
"Can wait down here, I can make tea or something, or if you wanted you could wait up there-"  
  
"Up there," she said automatically.  
  
Shelby seemed surprised but took it in stride. "First door on the left," she said, nodding to the stairs.  
  
Even in the dim light of the drawn shades, the room was obviously a fully-stocked nursery. Stuffed animals lined almost every surface, stacks of supplies had taken over the changing table and dresser top, and a bookshelf overflowed with cardboard books and a few children's paperbacks to be used for bedtime stories. He wasn't entirely sure what he'd expected the nursery to look like, but knowing Vocal Adrenaline he'd figured it wouldn't be quite this...little-girly. The wallpaper was pink and striped - or it looked like near the door where the light from the hall came in - and all the furniture was white and curved. It didn't look anything like he figured Shelby would do.  
  
The fact that he was even thinking about it made him feel too gay, like Kurt had rubbed off on him or something. Not that Kurt rubbing anything was bad, just...not something he wanted to think about now that all that was over.  
  
Beth was asleep in the crib. Quinn and Puck looked at each other, each expecting the other to advance towards the crib first and give them both permission. Neither of them moved. They just stood next to the wall by the door and stared at the crib from several feet away.  
  
She wondered suddenly what she thought would tie all of this to the real issue at hand. She hadn't thought through that part of the plan, she supposed. Without anything else to serve as a proper segue, she decided to just start the conversation where she thought it needed to be started.  
  
"Kurt told me some of what he said," Quinn said quietly, and Puck stiffened at the idea that the two of them had been conspiring about him. It made him think Sam's invitation to movie night had been along similar lines. Dude was a horrible conspirator; he made a mental note not to bring Sam in on the planning if they ever had to exact revenge again. Finn was dim, but at least he would just follow the plan as laid-out - Sam would probably try to add something that would just backfire. He was a good guy and all but couldn't leave well enough alone on shit sometimes. "About your dad, about me." She leaned against the pink striped wallpaper and stared across the room at the sleeping baby in the crib. "And not that you'd ever admit it, but I'm pretty sure he's right about some of it." Puck gave a noncommittal snort. "You do know he wasn't leaving you, right?"  
  
"Whatever," Puck replied, staring at the mobile. He half expected it to blast some Vocal Adrenaline song, get Beth into show choir practically from birth. His luck, she'd turn into Rachel. Kind of appropriate, he guessed - since she was being raised by Rachel's mom and all, and considering she was born during Regionals.  
  
She nodded slowly. Not like she'd expected one sentence to suddenly get Puck to crack open like a pistachio and start blubbering about how he'd always felt abandoned, she did know him better than that. But figuring out how to get through to him could be so frustrating.  
  
"I keep forgetting how long it's been," she said finally. "She's so big now."  
  
"Yeah." His voice was distant.  
  
"It still feels like it wasn't long ago. It's still fresh." This time he just nodded. "Sam tries to understand but he wasn't-...he got the story from Finn while you were in juvie, so I'm kind of surprised he didn't decide to hate me on the spot." She expected that to get some reaction from Puck - mutual annoyance at Finn, jealousy over Sam swooping in on 'his' girl even though they'd never really been a couple and he'd already started sleeping with Kurt at that point, possessiveness over someone else telling a story that wasn't theirs to tell...nothing. A vague quirk of the eyebrows in her direction, nothing she could read.   
  
"It's hard to trust him after everything," she offered. Maybe if she was open, he would let his guard down a little. She knew she was one of a very few people who could trick Puck into actually admitting to having emotions; Kurt seemed to be the only other one at the moment. "He can do everything right but I still think-"  
  
"Sorry to have ruined guys for you forever," Puck replied shortly.  
  
Shit. That had backfired - badly. She drew in a deep breath and, as calmly as she could, explained, "That's not what I was saying. I was saying, I made mistakes last year. I let my guard down too far and we both know what happened. I got hurt and-"  
  
He rolled his eyes. She was being so fucking patronizing, sounded like the pshrink they made him see in juvie. "And are learning to love again through pretty blond boys?" he asked sarcastically. Why did people think he liked hearing about all the guys who would be better for someone than he was? If he went around telling a girl all the reasons she wasn't good enough or hot enough or made a totally shitty girlfriend, he'd be a total douchebag, right? But it was fine for every girl he met to tell him why he was a bad guy like that?  
  
Fine. Every girl and Kurt now, he guessed. After the guy's ridiculous psychoanalysis crap the other night and everything.  
  
"No, I'm learning to trust again - especially myself," she replied. He could be so frustrating when he got like this, especially because she knew it was a defense mechanism. She wasn't that big of an idiot.  
  
"Like I said, learning to love again through the healing power of the guy's ginormous mouth."  
  
"See, this is what you do," she said, shaking her head. "You tell yourself you're the bad guy, so then you go  _act_  like the bad guy, like it absolves you of any responsibility. You're not actually that guy, you have a good heart-" He rolled his eyes. "-under all the mohawk. But as long as you act like a jerk, it's not a surprise people don't want to be around you, right? Because no one expects the relationship with the bad boy to last, so it's kind of doomed from the start so you can't be upset when it ends."  
  
He thought he followed that, at least. She was totally wrong, except maybe not.  
  
"Like being a nice guy gets me anywhere anyway," he stated, and was glad his voice cooperated in keeping the tone flip instead of showing it pissed him off. Even when he  _tried_  to be decent to people, no one believed him anyway.   
  
"Oh please. You bolt at the first sign of trouble."  
  
"That's bullshit -" He started to raise his voice, but Quinn brought a finger to her lips and glared and he dropped it again to a pissed whisper. "You ditched me.  _He_  ditched  _me_. Even freaking Rachel was the one who broke it off - Mercedes, too. Not like I give a shit, but at least get the record straight. Jeez. I'm so freaking sick of everyone acting like I'm the one who uses people when they're the ones who walk away." He crossed his arms over his chest defensively and slumped against the wall with a glower.  
  
She'd never stopped to count up all his relationships, in large part because she didn't need to think about how many women in town she'd been linked to through her one and only foray into sexual activity, but until he named them like that she hadn't realized that he really wasn't the one who broke up with people.   
  
They were silent for a few minutes. "Why'd you shove me away after?" he asked finally with a nod in the direction of the crib. Not like either of them needed a noun in that sentence.  
  
"Because the last thing I wanted was to feel tied to...all of this," Quinn admitted softly. "Face it, Puck, you and I never had a relationship. We had a child, there's a difference."  
  
"We could've. You gave up both of them." She would have expected him to sound bitter, but he sounded far more tired and resigned than she anticipated.  
  
"Do you really think we would have been happy?"  
  
"I think it would've been the right thing to do. Step up, man up-"  
  
"Puck. We would be living in your mother's house, trying to cram a crib into your disgusting bedroom, not sleeping for days on end. You would've dropped out of school already to try and get a job so I wouldn't kill your mother and/or you, neither of us would have any future except this. And you would still be sleeping with Santana on the side."  
  
"I wouldn't," he replied shortly. "Not if we were a family." He knew that was the thing that had hurt his mom the most, all the other women his dad screwed around with - that pissed her off more than the coming and going, the lack of income, any of it. He was honest about what he did, and if he had a kid and a wife it would stop. Wouldn't be easy, especially because he doubted Quinn would have put out much after Beth was born, but he wouldn't have been sneaking around like that.   
  
She gave him a look like she wasn't sure whether or not to believe him, and that pissed him off more than anything she had said to him in a long time.  
  
"She's happy here," Quinn said finally. "We did what was right for her. You signing the adoption papers instead of fighting me on it? That took more manhood than some fistful of pool cleaning money. You could have refused to sign but you didn't."  
  
"You told me what you wanted, I wasn't going to stop you." He hadn't had a choice in it. Every time he tried to talk about raising her, bringing her up, even naming her, it was a fight and Quinn had made very clear she thought there was no way he could be a good enough dad to even think about it.   
  
"Since when did that stop you?" she pointed out.   
  
"Is that why I was never enough for you?" he asked, and she froze at how candid and  _open_  the pointed question was.  
  
She regarded him carefully. "Enough for what?" she asked slowly. "We didn't even  _like_  each other. I was lonely and you were there. Then I was stuck crashing at your place for three months and finding you really,  _really_  annoying. Then I never wanted to think about any of it ever again. It couldn't be about being enough for me - you never tried to be anything for me. I never wanted you to."  
  
Puck snorted. He had tried, she'd shot him down. There was a difference between the two, even if she didn't seem to think so. Not like anyone else wanted him to be enough for them anyway - everyone wanted him on the side. Usually with Finn as the main dish and him as some freaking cole slaw or something. At least with Kurt it wasn't Finn anymore; it was an entire school of lame-ass preppy gay dorks. He didn't like it any better.  
  
"I should have protected him better," he said very quietly.  
  
"Is that why you're taking out the entire JV football squad, one at a time, instead of just torturing losers?" she asked, and though he didn't respond she could tell she was right. "No amount of dumpster tossing or urine-filled projectiles could have kept him safe at school. None of that would have made him happy. Knowing him and how much you used to harass him, it probably would have just made him even more wary of dating you, like you could turn on him at any moment. Not that he'd ever say that, he's as stubborn and proud as you are." Puck smiled faintly, begrudgingly, at that. "Him being unhappy at school has nothing to do with him being unhappy with you. You know that, right?"  
  
"Course," Puck replied with a half-glare that said 'How stupid do you think I am?', but in reality he wasn't nearly so certain. It was one of those things people say, y'know - "It's not you, it's me." Well, when it's every single person...at a certain point it really is you.   
  
"He thinks you broke up with him. The thing where you kissed him and left?"  
  
"He told me to," he replied sullenly. Once again, all his fault even though the guy freaking  _told_  him-  
  
"He told you to fight for him. You kissed him and walked out."  
  
"I did what he fucking told me to. Then he sends you to play therapist-"  
  
"He didn't send me. He doesn't know about any of this." Puck didn't respond but looked like he believed her.   
  
Beth, who had been stirring for several minutes, opened her eyes and let out a cry - probably just trying to alert people she was awake, right? Puck thought. Sarah had kept that crap up until she was out of her crib and could get out of her bed herself, but how old had she been when it stopped being a neverending cry for some immediate need?   
  
Quinn looked like a deer in the headlights, like she was desperately waiting for a mothering instinct to kick in and it wasn't, like she  _felt_  like she should know how to calm down this person she'd shared her body with for almost a year but had no idea. So Puck did the only thing he could think of - strode to the crib and picked her up.  
  
He wasn't sure how he quieted her down, there was some shushing or something involved and if Quinn ever breathed a word of this to anyone he was sure it would destroy his rep but get him dates with like every girl in school. But once she seemed reasonably certain that he wasn't abducting her or something, she instead just kept looking around like she was trying to figure everything out.  
  
It was weird. He kept trying to find little bits of him in her, like figuring out what she was thinking, but then would remember she was a baby and probably wasn't that deep yet or anything. Knowing she was his kid but at the same time was a stranger felt more surreal than wrenching, and the fact that it didn't make him want to hurl almost made him feel worse.  
  
"You're good with her," Quinn said quietly. "Too bad about the..." She nodded towards his crotch. "You'd make a good dad someday - when you're not 16."  
  
"You're not the only one who doesn't want to relive last year," he replied in a low voice. "Do you want to-"  
  
"No. Thank you," she murmured, eyes already welling up. She did move closer, though, and reached out to let Beth grip her fingers. The little family that never was.  
  
"You know," Quinn began slowly. "The one and only time I thought maybe we could do this was when you sang to me. And named her."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Yeah." She let her free hand graze his arm in a way that managed to be familiar but completely nonsexual. That did describe most of their relationship, didn't it? "He'd appreciate that if anyone would."  
  
"Getting a group of guys to sit on stools and sing to him?" Puck snorted.  
  
"Just you. You're different when you sing - you let go of the badass thing and are just...charming. And sweet." He shot her a glare that wasn't serious and she just smiled. "I'm not going to be all sentimental and say something about how you're Noah instead of Puck because I know you don't like that - I can't really blame you, after hearing your mother use it in practically every passive-aggressive sentence-" Puck grinned. "-but I know you know what I mean."  
  
"Maybe," he allowed.  
  
"Just let it out. All the...everything. As long as you're not grabbing him and kissing him and leaving him shivering in Sam's front yard, it'll be an improvement over the last time you thought you were fixing things."  
  
"Maybe," he repeated. He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Should get back. If Mom gets home and I'm not there and Sarah's over at the neighbours', she's gonna ground me. And make me listen to a lecture about how much of a disappointment I am." Quinn almost laughed since she could practically recite the lecture by heart after living there for like three months. He carried Beth carefully downstairs to Shelby, who looked pleasantly surprised.  
  
"I didn't even hear her scream."  
  
"She did a little but calmed down pretty fast."  
  
"Really? Normally she doesn't do that for anyone but me. Not even my mother, it drives her crazy."  
  
"She just likes him, I guess," Quinn offered.  
  
"We should go. But, uh, thanks," Puck said awkwardly.  
  
"Anytime. Just call to make sure we're home."  
  
They nodded but neither one thought they'd take her up on it. 


	4. Chapter 4

icking a song was harder than he anticipated.  
  
His "Jewish Guys with Guitars" playlist failed him. He wasn't sure how, he had all the classics in a variety of moods with a bunch of different styles and whatever, but nothing.  
  
Billy Joel seemed like a good place to start, but most of his songs weren't ones where you could easily change the "shes" to "hes" - "Always a Man To Me" didn't have the same ring to it. Or they were about annoying people in Queens or going to a restaurant or something. He briefly contemplated "And So It Goes" but it was too...melancholy. Anything with the line "And you can have this heart to break" was definitely out. No giving the guy ideas.   
  
Besides, it was a song that wouldn't work on guitar; it had to be piano (making it technically wrong for the playlist but he wasn't about to get rid of it), and he didn't really feel like sharing the moment with Brad.  
  
Even though the relationship started with a night of fucking while Kurt was kinda stoned on cupcakes, he didn't think Bob Dylan was really suited for the occasion. "Blowing in the Wind" was the closest he got, and that was out.  
  
Anthrax was out. That was more "I fucking hate you and never want to see you again" than "I'm trying to apologize here, what do you want from me?"  
  
Much as he loved "Walking in Memphis," it didn't have much to do with the subject at hand, and nothing by Simon and Garfunkel seemed appropriately...whatever. The J. Geils Band could have been promising, but the only ones he had on his iPod were "Angel is the Centerfold" and "Love Stinks." Not really what he was going for.  
  
The point at which he was seriously debating which REO Speedwagon songs sounded the least like something Finn would sing so he could avoid more freaking comparisons was the point at which he gave up and switched to a full-iPod shuffle.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Retail therapy with Mercedes had been nice. Well, nice-ish, Kurt concluded. She still didn't know quite what to say to him, and the distance that had been between them for months was still there. At the very least it took his mind off things - for the most part. And he had a fabulous new sweater, even if he didn't have anywhere to wear it.  
  
But by the next afternoon, when Mercedes had some test to study for and Quinn had Cheerios, he started to seriously debate just how lame and awkward he would be to text Blaine and offer to drive almost an hour each way to have someone to hang out with.  
  
It had to be better than what he was already doing - draping over the round-backed chair and listening mournfully to Edith Piaff - right? Next on the list was Celine; for now, he was still in too depressed of a mood to belt out power notes in any language.  
  
He wasn't sure why he'd expected some kind of word from Puck after Saturday night, but a part of him had. He'd been sufficiently distracted all day Sunday - and sufficiently exhausted Sunday night - to not check his phone every five seconds as he packed up what seemed like the entire house and hauled box after box into the garage. But by the time Monday morning rolled around without a text, he'd resigned himself to it.  
  
Time to face reality. Puck wasn't going to be texting him because there  _was_  no more him and Puck.  
  
Sometime in the middle of "La Vie En Rose," his phone chirped. Not just chirped - played the first eight notes of "Sound of Silence." If anyone asked later, he would deny just how quickly he reached for his phone and the little gasp that escaped as he did. After all, he was over it. It didn't matter.  
  
The message was short but made his heart almost stop. His breathing certainly paused for longer than was comfortable, at any rate.  
  
 _choir room now._  
  
There was a period, which was uncharacteristic of texts from Puck, but only one which he supposed was-  
  
Was he seriously analyzing grammar after getting his first text from the guy in two full weeks? A text that not only didn't tell him to fuck off and stop calling, but in fact requested that Kurt meet him?  
  
Kurt took that moment to do something uncharacteristic himself: he grabbed the first clothes he could find. In this case, it ended up being a slightly-rumpled henley, a pair of tight jeans, his fabulous new sweater (he had enough foresight to remember to take the tags off first) and his boots. He tore up the stairs and out to his car and nearly broke every speed limit on the way to the school. As ridiculous as it was, a part of him was almost afraid that if he took too long, Puck would decide 'fuck this shit' and leave.  
  
By the time he half-skidded through the empty hall and into the choir room, he had convinced himself that the entire thing was an elaborate set-up to tell him to fuck off for good and he was going to be running into an ambush. Jesse-style or something. There was simply no way that Puck could have broken two weeks of radio silence to tell him to come to a school he didn't attend anymore. He wondered when his cynicism had tapered off enough that he even thought it was a good idea to show up in the first place - a year ago, he would have known better than this.  
  
But when he reached the room where he'd spent so much of his time over the previous year, he found Puck sitting on a stool in front of the piano with his guitar.  
  
It took every ice queen instinct he had left to walk across the room instead of grabbing him and either shaking him or kissing him like his life depended on it. It was ridiculous, he knew, and he was being naive and pathetic. Maybe he wasn't nearly as different as he had been during the Finn crush, at least not as much as he wanted to believe.   
  
Though he did seriously doubt that Puck would show up with his guitar to tell him to never speak to him again. That seemed to be a level of cruelty that even Puck on his worst day wouldn't be capable of.  
  
He took a seat in the center of the front row and delicately crossed his legs at the knees. "You texted?" he said in his dryest voice.  
  
Puck quirked an eyebrow. He wasn't an idiot; he knew Kurt's act by now. He drew in a deep breath and said, “Yeah. I wanted to...explain, I guess, or whatever.”  
  
Kurt stared at him expectantly but maintained his sour expression. When Puck didn't launch into an apology right away, he said, “Well? I'm listening.” He wondered if he was screwing himself – if he was as much of an ass to Puck as he had to be to keep the kind of distance he needed, there was a decent chance Puck would say 'fuck this' and walk out. But if he stopped, if he let himself-  
  
No. It had to be like this. The ball was in Puck's court, though Kurt couldn't believe he'd used a sports metaphor for that, and if there was going to be anything between them it had to be at Puck's behest.   
  
When no explanation wanted to come readily, Puck just shrugged and started plucking out the opening notes. “Meat Loaf isn't Jewish, but the guy who wrote it probably is. And the guy was on Broadway,” he added. Kurt had no idea what that meant. He did know that Puck had indeed sung songs by non-Jewish artists before – he didn't think “Marky Mark” was one of the prophets or whatever the appropriate religious reference would be, but the Broadway reference made him think Puck was going out of his way to pick something in his genre. The [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oUUG4LpQI0) definitely wasn't one he knew, though, and from the way Puck sang it Kurt seriously doubted it had been in anything ever featured at the Tonys.  
  
 _I was lost til you were found  
And I never knew how far down  
I was falling before I reached the bottom._  
  
Puck had been a little unsure when he put the whole thing on guitar. After all, it was originally on piano with a full freaking orchestra behind him. They had an entire strings section on call if he wanted it, and Brad was always just there, but this was...it was private. Unlike when he named Beth and made it a point of wanting to tell the entire glee club how he felt-...they knew this already. They knew about him and Kurt, that's not what any of this was. This was about telling  _Kurt_. It needed to just be the two of them.   
  
Then he figured out he needed to transpose it down anyway because he didn't have the B-flat and his A was shaky, and instead of letting Rachel whine at him for awhile to try to get the note, he figured he'd just put it in G where he sounded better and it worked with the guitar.  
  
Plus it gave him something to focus on other than staring Kurt in the eye the whole time. Not like he was nervous – he didn't do nervous. But the guy could be kind of intimidating when he was glaring if a person was being all open and whatever. Kurt had a very good disapproving stare; his mother would be proud.  
  
 _You were cold and I was fire_  - he changed the lyrics. After all, Kurt was the ice queen, right? And he was the hothead who just happened to hide it all behind an “I'm too cool for this shit” demeanor as he did stupid shit.  
 _And I never knew how the pyre  
Could be burning on the edge of the ice field  
  
And now the chilly California wind  
Is blowing down our bodies again  
And we're sinking, deeper and deeper  
In the chilly California sand  
Oh I know you belong inside my aching heart  
And can't you see my faded Levis bursting apart?_  
  
Kurt gave him the most deadpan “Really? That's supposed to be romantic?” look, but it faded on the next line.   
  
 _And don't you hear me crying "Oh babe, don't go"?  
And don't you hear me screaming "How was I to know?"_  
  
He hoped Kurt got what he was saying there, that it wasn't just a lyric, that he really was trying. Quinn was right that if anyone would appreciate the gesture it was Kurt, but he and Kurt didn't have enough musically in common for him to be able to guarantee how Kurt listened to stuff – was he a lyrics guy? He always seemed more of an emotional singer than a literal lyrics type, but some of it...well, he'd chosen the song for a reason, and it wasn't because he just wanted to sing the word “California” as many times as he could without resorting to Katy Perry or the Beach Boys.  
  
 _I'm in the middle of nowhere, near the end of the line  
But there's a border to somewhere waiting  
And there's a tank full of time  
Oh give me just another moment to see the light of the day  
And take me to another land where I don't have to stay  
And I'm gonna need somebody to make me feel like you do  
And I will receive somebody with open arms, open eyes,  
Open up the sky, let the planet that I love shine through-_  
  
Here was the thing: He had picked the song first before singing through every single lyric. Rather, he knew the lyrics were there, but he was more focused on other ones. So when it came to the first chorus, the first “For crying out loud, you know I love you”, he froze. His fingers kept strumming the way they should have, but he couldn't sing anything. Luckily for him, Kurt didn't seem to know the song and wouldn't know anything was up – it could just be a weird instrumental break. He ducked his head and continued playing, moving through the actual instrumental break part and into the second verse.  
  
 _I was damned and you were saved_  
  
Puck began, and Kurt rolled his eyes just slightly, but he couldn't help but be reminded of that whole week, with the religious theme and his dad and how absolutely horrible he felt-...except when Puck was over. And sure, the illegal substances probably had something to do with it, and the sex probably had more to do with it, but it wasn't even that simple.  
  
All week, when he felt crappy like this? He wanted to call Puck to make it feel better. He wasn't sure what that was a sign of, but he felt like it had to mean something.  
  
 _And I never knew how enslaved  
I was kneeling in the chains of my master  
  
I could laugh, oh, but you cry_ - Puck sang that like it was a good thing. Kurt was just glad he'd managed to keep himself from welling up for the most part thus far.  
  
 _And I never knew just how high  
I was flying with you right above me  
  
But now the chilly California wind  
Is blowing down our bodies again  
And we're sinking deeper and deeper  
In the chilly California sand  
Oh I know you belong inside my aching heart  
And can't you feel my faded Levis bursting apart?_   
  
This time the line earned him a smile and a roll of the eyes from Kurt. Small victories. He looked Kurt right in the eye as he sang the most important part and hoped the guy would get what he was trying to say.  
  
 _And don't you hear me crying, "Babe, don't go"?  
And don't you hear me screaming, "How was I to know?"_  
  
Kurt's lips parted slightly as he sucked in a breath like he had to try to remember to do it because he was too busy staring. After a long moment he ducked his head and Puck could see his cheeks starting to flush pink; it didn't take a rocket scientist or knowing Kurt his entire life to guess the tears were starting.  
  
 _I'm in the middle of nowhere, near the end of the line  
But there's a border to somewhere waiting  
And there's a tank full of time  
Oh give me just another moment to see the light of the day  
And take me to another land where I don't have to stay  
And I'm gonna need somebody to make me feel like you do_  
  
He couldn't put his finger on how exactly that was, but he knew it was a good thing. Kurt seemed to get what he meant, at any rate, if the look on his face was any indication – like he kinda wanted to hug him, which wasn't quite as good as looking like he couldn't keep his clothes on...but they  _were_  at school and just their luck the janitor would show up. Or Mr. Schue.   
  
 _And I will receive somebody with open arms, open eyes,  
Open up the sky, let the planet that I love shine through_  
  
The line was coming up again. He wanted to say it – to sing it, whatever. Staring at Kurt with his watery blue-green eyes and slightly shocked and moved expression, it felt like the words were clawing at him, trying to get out, but he couldn't. That wasn't something he said; not to Kurt, not to anyone. It was what people like Finn or Rachel said, lame people sang who pathetic schmoopy songs and got their hearts crushed by morons with ringlets (what dude had that kind of curls anyway? Jewfros he got, but that was too...producted. Was anyone sure Jesse wasn't actually gay?). He didn't do that shit. And if Kurt was going to expect him to do that shit, then the guy hadn't listened to anything he'd ever said.  
  
But he felt this weird ache thing when he thought about Kurt walking out of that room without him. Kinda like running too hard in a really long practice but without the part where he thought he was gonna hurl. It had been feeling that way awhile, he guessed; when he thought about some guy shoving Kurt into a locker, it was there under the simmering rage. And when he looked around the hallways and didn't see any weird hats or crazy sweater things, it was just freaking  _there_  and it didn't go away no matter how many punks he shoved in dumpsters, and usually that shit was good to fix whatever was bugging him.  
  
Oh god.  
  
Okay, so maybe now he thought he was gonna hurl.  
  
 _For taking in the rain when I'm feeling so dry  
For giving me the answers when I'm asking you why,  
And my, oh my, for that I thank you._  
  
He took out the next part about Kurt giving him a child when they were old, which was good because it coincided with the line about needing him which was a little too...something. Even he had his limits on how out there he could be in one eight-minute period.  
  
 _For coming to my room when you know I'm alone_  
  
Kurt smiled faintly – quiet, empty houses were kind of their thing.  
  
 _For finding me a highway, for driving me home  
And you gotta know, for that I serve you._  
  
The tempo started to pick up again, and Puck decided that was to his advantage – like gaining speed if you wanted to really take out a defensive lineman or something. Not like singing a lyric was the same as slamming past a 400-pound guy; it was definitely harder.   
  
 _For pulling me away when I'm starting to fall  
For revving me up when I'm starting to stall,  
And all in all, for that I want you.  
  
For taking and forgiving and for playing the game  
For praying for my future and the days that remain  
Oh, lord, for that I hold you.  
  
Oh, but most of all_  
  
The words burned in his throat as he choked out  _For crying out loud-_  but his voice stopped there. He shook his head a tiny amount, then circled back around for a second attempt. The song repeated it like a zillion times at the end, maybe if he tried again-  
  
Nothing.  
  
The third time, he stroked angrily down on the chord and gave up. “Just google the damn thing,” he said before slipping off the stool and striding out of the room. No amount of trying was going to make him able to say crap like that. He'd tried. If it was a dealbreaker for Kurt, they were over anyway.  
  
  
* * * * *  
  
Burt was used to seeing his son frustrated. Between kids at school, jerks in the shop, and being stuck in a small town that apparently lacked basic spices (he didn't know what Kurt's deal was; the store had salt, pepper, oregano, garlic, chili powder – what more did a person need?), he'd seen the tight “If I were anyone else I would want to kill things right now” look on his kid's face more than a few times over the years. What he hadn't seen was Kurt looking like he was ready to throw expensive electronics against the wall.  
  
"Dammit," Kurt hissed from his place on the couch. His fingers clenching around his phone as he furiously tried to enter something else. He scrolled through something, shook his head, and punched the buttons again.   
  
"What's up?" Burt asked with a kind of raised eyebrow.  
  
"It's not working."  
  
"We need to go take it down to the store again? There's that one lady who knows how to fix about anything-"  
  
"No, it's- it's physically working fine, but nothing I search for is giving me the right answer. I might have a better idea if I could just YouTube it, but the audio quality for video clips has never been great on this thing."   
  
Burt knew what most of that meant, at least. "Why not do it on the computer?"  
  
"The wireless is screwed up. Apparently trying to install Carole's computer yesterday broke the entire thing somehow - I don't even know - and the guy's coming in a few hours to fix it, but that might be too late."  
  
"Too late for what?"  
  
Kurt let out a long, exasperated sigh and let the hand holding the phone flop to the side so he could look up at his father and explain. "Puck sang this song to me, but there was a section he couldn't sing and told me to google it. So I tried, but that only works if you know what the song is. I tried searching from the lyrics I could remember, but I wasn't paying enough attention to the words apparently because nothing I search for is pulling up anything useful. At least, I don't think so - because even if I see a list of lyrics, how do I know if they're right?"  
  
"You remember how it goes?" Burt asked.  
  
"Yes, but I don't have the app for that. I would have to delete off one of the others because I'm running low on space - the Copenhagen Fashion Week app takes up too much room-"  
  
"It a Broadway thing or, y'know, a regular song?"  
  
"Why?" Kurt asked, eyes narrowing.  
  
"Before your fancy phone, there was a way of figuring this stuff out."  
  
"What?"  
  
"You sing it, then the person you're with either knows it or they don't."  
  
"That's not useful. What are the chances you and I know any of the same songs if it's not something one of us has been playing for a decade?" Kurt asked.  
  
"Yeah, but you don't know it," Burt pointed out, not unkindly.  
  
Kurt considered his limited options and sighed. This was worth a shot before he tried to clear off space on his phone, at least. "He said something about meatloaf not being Jewish but the guy who wrote it was."  
  
"Meat Loaf, like the singer?"  
  
Kurt stared at him. "There's a singer named Meat Loaf?"  
  
"Yeah," Burt replied like he couldn't believe Kurt didn't know that. "Oh c'mon, you know some of his stuff. I know I've played it.” When Kurt gave him a blank but exasperated look, Burt walked out to the garage and Kurt followed him. “I know I've got it in here – I found all these when we were cleaning,” he said as he moved a few boxes to get to the one he was looking for.  
  
As he pulled a box of records from the shelf and set it down, Kurt blinked. “Okay, for Christmas? I'm getting you all of these on CD. Because this is just sad. If I thought you'd let me just get the MP3s I would, but you can't play them in your-” Burt set down a second box, the one he was looking for, and Kurt stared at the contents. “What. Are. Those?”  
  
“8-track,” Burt replied like it should've been obvious. “You know, you pulled open the box of these when you were about five and asked if you could watch them. Thought they were VHS – you know, those things before DVDs,” he added, teasing.  
  
Kurt was in no mood for it. “Can you even play those?”  
  
“Yeah,” Burt said, digging out what to Kurt looked like the tape recorder he'd had when he was 4. It had come with a microphone and was bright red. This was yellow and mic-less but looked equally ridiculous. He watched as his father began to sift through the cartridges, saying something about how it was probably on Bat because no one listened to Bat 2. He didn't even want to know but he was sure somehow Mr. Schue would manage to pick those songs for the club to sing – not his problem anymore.  
  
“So what song was it?” Burt asked as he carried the found items back into the living room. “It better not have been 'Paradise by the Dashboard Lights'.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“About a guy...y'know, making out with a girl, and there's a baseball announcer talking about him rounding the bases...then he tells the girl what she wants to hear to- I guess not,” he said, looking at Kurt's disturbed expression.   
  
“I don't know. Something about...” Kurt tried to think. He remembered something about being hard in his Levis, which he didn't think was a line he should share with his dad, and he remembered something about empty houses, and California, and...and that the part at the end Puck couldn't sing that he thought was probably meant to be in the weird breaks earlier in the song, too, but couldn't prove. He half-sung through the only line he could grasp onto: “And don't hear me crying, oh babe, don't go? And can't you hear me screaming-”  
  
Burt nodded and started to go to the track, then stopped and looked like he'd been struck by something. “What, um. What part couldn't he...”  
  
“The very end.”  
  
He shifted awkwardly. He knew what lyric went there, and he wasn't sure if the kid not singing it meant he didn't feel it or – as he suspected – a guy was trying to tell Kurt ( _his_  son, the kid he read bedtime stories to!) he loved him and doing it badly.   
  
He wasn't sure when they got to this point, because his son still  _looked_  twelve and no one who looked twelve should be having that conversation. Even if his son was in high school and would be heading off to college too soon for comfort, even though he remembered wondering if he should say it to a girl he liked when he was probably about Kurt's age...  
  
“I'm just gonna...go put the stuff away,” he said, standing and heading back towards the garage. “You listen.”  
  
“Dad? What's-”  
  
“Nothing. Just...y'know. Stuff about boys still kind of...”  
  
Kurt nodded slowly, his curiosity more than a little piqued. Unfortunately, as he discovered, the biggest downside to 8-tracks was the inability to fastforward. What had seemed like ten seconds when Puck sang it now dragged on for minutes on end that felt like hours. He caught the line Puck had changed about which one of them was cold, but otherwise he just wanted to scream “Hurry  _up_  already!”  
  
Then he got to the line and froze.  
  
 _For crying out loud, you know I love you._  
  
And just in case he thought he'd misheard it the first time, the singer repeated it. And repeated it again. And by the time the third one was over, he felt like he couldn't suck in enough oxygen to make his brain function – that had to be why, right?  
  
He stumbled off his chair and sprinted to his car. Midway there he realized he wasn't sure if he'd bothered to tell his dad where he was going, but his dad could guess, right? They had a conversation about Puck and then he tore out of the house – it was hardly a mystery?  
  
He felt bad about practically barreling past Sarah when she answered the door, but he couldn't stop himself. He raced up the stairs to Puck's room as fast as he could without tripping and slammed the door behind him. “You don't get to just walk out of a room when something's hard to say!” he exclaimed, and only then did he look around.  
  
Fortunately for him, the room was empty except for Puck. He didn't really know what he would have done if Santana was in there, or some other random girl...or, for that matter, if Puck  _hadn't_  been in there.  
  
But what really gave him pause was the almost fearful look in Puck's eyes when he looked over. It was a vulnerability even he hadn't seen before, even through all the nights in quiet houses and the kind of post-sex haze where they had a tendency to get a little more cuddly than Puck was ever really comfortable with. Puck mumbled, “What do you want from me?” in a voice that clearly said he expected Kurt to read him the riot act and then storm out.  
  
“You don't get to bolt when you get scared. Not if you meant any other word in that song,” Kurt stated firmly, standing his ground.  
  
“I did,” Puck replied, pushing himself off the bed.  
  
“I don't care that you have issues. You don't get to be an ass and then expect it all to be better later.” Kurt stared at him, waiting for him to say something, waiting for Puck to give some explanation or even a sarcastic eyebrow raise to show he heard him or  _something_ , but all he heard was his own voice whispering, “I missed you.”  
  
Puck closed the gap between them and took Kurt's face in his hands, kissing him. How stiff Kurt was bothered him, felt like Kurt should be shoving him away any second now. He might deserve that, he knew; the way Kurt's hands rested on his wrists instead of around his back, the hesitance...  
  
He wanted to shove Kurt away first, to somehow be the one making the decision to be apart before Kurt could, but being apart wasn't actually what he wanted. Not at all. And his instincts on all this had been so freaking wrong...so he did the next thing that came to mind.  
  
He clung.  
  
Not like a little kid who doesn't want to go somewhere or anything, he wasn't  _that_  lame. And still deny all this later. But he released Kurt's face from his hands and moved them down to wrap tightly around his lower back, pulling him closer. He broke the kiss and rested his forehead against Kurt's, breathing deliberately as he willed himself not to do something really stupid like beg for Kurt to stay.   
  
There was open, and then there was just pathetic.  
  
Kurt wrapped his arms around Puck's back and leaned in to kiss him softly, moving as close to him as he could.  
  
Maybe he shouldn't have discounted his people so quickly, Puck thought. After all, the Billy Joel line seemed more appropriate here - “So I would choose to be with you/that's if the choice were mine to make/but you can make decisions too/and you can have this heart to break.” But all things considered, he wasn't going to question it; after all, the other song got them here.


End file.
